Kick-Ass 2 Might Be Difficult to Make, Comic Book Writer Finally Admits
Posted 09.23.11 by Ryan
If there's one person who's been utterly convinced that there will be a sequel to 2010's Kick-Ass, it's Mark Millar, the writer and co-creator of the Kick-Ass comic book and executive producer of the movie adaptation. A month after the movie was released, Millar proclaimed that production would begin in 2011 on a sequel, titled Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall. Millar later revised his statement, saying that Kick-Ass 2 would start in "nine months" after Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn finished with X-Men: First Class.
While Millar remained confident, his Kick-Ass collaborators were not. Actor Aaron Johnson, who played the title role in the movie, was the first to counter Millar's timeline, announcing that he thought the plan was "to hold off and wait for that anticipation." Cast members Lyndsy Fonseca and Chloe Moretz both agreed with Johnson that Kick-Ass 2 was not a sure thing, though Moretz recently revealed that a sequel was possible but her character, Hit-Girl, would "be a little bit older."
Vaughn, meanwhile, has has said that he'd be interested in returning but couldn't manage a commitment to a sequel beyond saying, "we might do it." Screenwriter Jane Goldman has been even less encouraging of a sequel, admitting in April that it may not happen at all.
Those comments are starting to catch up with Millar, who recently told The LA Times that Kick-Ass 2 wasn't the near certainty he so often proclaimed it to be.
The thing about the first movie is that it kind of exploded all our careers. People forget, but this was a $28-million indie movie made in the UK. It grossed $100 million at theaters and made the same again and more on DVD and Blu-ray and got amazing reviews. So everybody involved suddenly got hired for a million different things, and re-forming the band again would be impossible. Hopefully, we can use the same actors if and when we do a sequel, but getting Matthew to direct or Jane to write a movie at this budget would be very difficult because they’re superstars now and they have projects of their own. I’d imagine, if this happens any time soon, that Matthew will produce and possibly co-write, like George Lucas did with The Empire Strikes Back, and hire a new director. But there’s a window because the actors are all supposed to be in high school and if this came out after 2013, for example, that window would have closed. I obviously know more than I can say, but I think people will be pretty happy with the conversations we’ve been having.
As usual, Millar is a little blinded by his own hype and has his figures wrong. Kick-Ass did get near a worldwide box office gross of $100 million, but fell short at $96 million. And, not to split hairs, but Millar's Star Wars comparisons would mean that Kick-Ass is on par with Lucas' first Star Wars movie A New Hope, which as much as we liked the first Kick-Ass, is perhaps going a bit far.
Either way, fans can still enjoy the second series of the Kick-Ass comic book, which is currently ongoing. Millar says that he plans for a third Kick-Ass comic book series, but won't extend beyond that.
"We can collect it into a nice box set," said Millar of the eventual three volumes of Kick-Ass comics. "And hopefully it’ll just become a little classic that people discover in the future like the Godfather movies or Lord of the Rings."
Looks like that Star Wars comparison was just the beginning.